We’ve been so busy winning houses for comics and prepping for CAKE and the AMC that we’ve barely had time to attend our own book-launch events, much less post pics from them! Still they were quite fun, and we wanted to share the love.

The pre-release panel talk at the Evanston Literary Festival, with Özge Samanci and Keiler Roberts, moderated by Brian Cremins.

The cashier’s station at Women and Children First for the booklaunch. Rivven brought all the collaborative zines we’ve made together over the last year!

AEM presents an overview of the book, the garment industry, and the particularly negative impact anti-trafficking organizations have had on Chicago sex workers.

We were thrilled to be joined at the Women & Children First event by SWOP-Chicago’s Serpent Libertine, who is also interviewed (extensively) in the book. We even held a raffle and raised over zero dollars for SWOP-Chicago’s educational and legal support efforts! (We forgot to count it, but we greatly appreciated your donations!)

Delia Jean gives an excellent intro to making comics journalism, as well as the unique difficulties facing those of us who want to depict the experiences of sex workers accurately, despite very few other media representations to turn to for inspiration or guidance.

Last week we were invited to the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa (see details here) to install an oral history window mural entitled Let’s Chat About Civil Rights / Let’s Chat About Civic Memory. Here are a few process shots, with Sheika Lugtu, Melissa Mendes, Chris Reno, and Tessa Pozzi working on the mural. (Anne Elizabeth Moore was behind the camera.)

We’re off to the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa at the behest of St. Ambrose University this week to install an original window mural. (In-progress draft below by Melissa Mendes.) The images, by Mendes and Sheika Lugtu, will be accompanied by oral histories from local Quad Cities residents regarding two major aspects of Davenport’s participation in the struggle for civil rights, and public commemoration of that past: the fight for equal marriage and black history.

Our interviewees were very generous with their time and our questions, and gave some beautiful insight into the Davenport area, and the absolute importance of keeping a constantly updated notion of civil rights at the center of public conversation. You’ll see more in the mural when we finish it April 7—a part of SAU’s Fair Play conference, hope you can come—but some of the quotes we’re most inspired by are below.

PASTOR RICH HENDRICKS

“I didn’t come out until I was 40. I grew up here—the community has become more diverse. I left here when I went to college. I don’t remember any African-American kids in my elementary school. …

“I grew up a product of a poor education. We had no sex ed when I was growing up. I didn’t realize that gay was an option. … My only recollection of a comment when I was younger was, I can remember my folks or their friends saying something about ‘those people down by the levy.’ The way they said it, you could tell it was dirty. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I could tell it was unacceptable. That was, you know, the cruising area.”

VICKI PHIPPS

“I have the best job in the whole world. In my own work, I address power relationships. In one of the projects I’m working on, I’m working with a biracial student on this notion of microaggressions. In general, why does a person of difference have to educate everyone else? Can art and design help further that?”

“I’m the last member of my family that could move back to the reservation. But people don’t meet me and go ‘Oh, Native American!’ Whereas they do see [my student] and go, ‘You’re black.’ So we both have a long list of things that follow us that you can’t leave behind. …”

KAYLA BUSHEY

“I feel like civil rights really mean equality. Equality for every type of person. … I feel like that really gets smudged along the way. It’s weird to say that I am this, or I am that, but according to standardized tests, I am half Caucasian, half African-American. My dad’s side is the white side and my mom’s side is the black side. It’s strange because here in school, either you’re a part of the Black Student Union, or you are the populous of the white student body. I feel like I try to tread that line—honestly, trying to get that privilege on both sides. Or wherever I can. I’ll go over to my dad’s side of the family. He’s a general in the military and he wants rights for people, but only if people have earned their rights. It’s hard to be like, well you were born with rights. Then I go to my mom’s side of the family, and she’s like, we need women’s rights, we need LGBTQ rights. I even have friends who haven’t experienced that push and pull from both sides. … I think when people pick and choose what kind of rights people should and shouldn’t get, they’re not really enforcing civil rights.”

ANONYMOUS

“Right or wrong, the assumption has been that gay, lesbian, transgender, and/or bisexual people are outside of the realm of—this is gonna sound bad—us good black folks. So then those of us who fit any of those [categories] are on the fringes. I remember studying sociology and talking about marginal people. So if you were white and gay and male in the 1960s, then you were kinda marginalized. But you still had your whiteness and your maleness, but if you’re black and lesbian, then you got nothin’.”

We gave a super fun talk yesterday on gender, comics, and radical investigative methodologies at Harper College, where the delightful Brian Cremins invited us to yammer about what we do. Rivven made these amazing cow aprons, in honor of Sheika’s love of our bovine friends, and Anne had to wear regular clothes and look professional so they would let us in the door in the first place.

Alecia introduces us at Women & Children First.Aino introduces Femicomix Finland with the phrase, “As you can see, Finnish words are very long.”

Our amazing audience.

Anna-Leena reads from her new book!

The fruits of Rae’s labor convincing people to make collaborative comics at our event (now available to browse in the front window, go read them, they’re adorbz.)

The Finns sweep the draw-off, bolstered by their strong showing by the prompt, Draw Grass Ox’s New Presidential Campaign Poster.

Rae drew Grass Ox eating the Constitution.

Sheika helps Grass Ox drect Rae’s drawing process.

The victors of the Draw Off were granted American citizenship. Rae’s totally ridiculous performance had them flashing people to convince them to make comics together. Rae choosing their next victim.

The tiny library created by our amazing audience.Another closeup, without the artist themselves.Sheika did a bang-up job as the Mistress of Ceremonies.Sheika and Ray, attacking the page with cats, butts, and hot dogs. AKA “ladydrawering the eff out of it.”Hanna-Pirita, Taina, and Roju draw their ideal man, LOL.Our favorite audience member draws some comics.